I love that forever doesn’t exist, but we have a word for it anyway, and use it all the time.

It’s beautiful and doomed. “

Viv Albertine

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So. Forever is one of those wacky philosophical thoughts which seem to inhabit the minds of almost everyone in Life.

Forever is almost like our one main go-to tactic to wrestle with how Time seems to fuck with our lives.

Suffice it to say we love the idea of forever <on some things>, hate the idea of forever <on some things>, constantly apply forever to time related to specific events and actions and, yet, we kill the entire concept of forever by using a relentless onslaught of minutes & hours.

Talk about dying a death of thousand cuts, that;’s what we do to forever with seconds, minutes, hours, milestones, result-focus, to-do lists, and, well, this list is fairly long.

Now. Just because we mangle the entire concept of forever doesn’t prove that it isn’t important.

In fact. We crazy people, who seem to adore anything that is conceptually intangible and its ‘bigness/infiniteness’, seemingly go out of our way to define everything in tangible ways and end up applying, in some really crazy ways, forever to the most random things.

<Tim Burton … from Alice in Wonderland movie but never in Lewis Carroll’s books>

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The true weirdness of our odd relationship with ‘forever’, which is infinite, is that our attempts to attach forever to things finite in nature more often than not it is an excruciating doomed finiteness definition.

And maybe even worse? While some people kill themselves with poison most of us slowly kill ourselves with forevers.

Which is really odd because, if asked, most people will chuckle, shrug their shoulders and say something like:

“ … nothing actually lasts forever.”

Crazy, isn’t it?

While we attach forever to the most miniscule of minuscule, forever and a day killing ourselves minute by minute and hour by hour, we don’t even fucking actually believe in it.

Personally, I think it is quite possible that maybe nothing is ever meant to last.

What I do know for sure is that the world is constantly changing and evolving and remaking itself maybe in some weird attempt to and make itself last forever. And maybe that is where we struggle the most with forever.

Within forever there is a constant ebb and flow of endings and beginnings and making, remaking & unmaking, infinite & finite. Forever, in its infiniteness, contains an infinite amount of multitudes.

That said.

Where do you draw the line of what is forever and what is not?

Is forever simply a complex intricate web of endings & beginnings?

Could forever simply be complexity defined in a simplistic way?

Shit.

Here is what I know. Pretty much everything has an end.

Oh. I also know this, while forever does not exist, it does exist as one very very important thing — possibility.

When you begin something, let’s say something good, something positive we have a tendency to want to attach forever to it.

“I wish this would last forever.”

Now.

We know it won’t.

But the possibility it will?

The hope it could?

Wow.

That is powerful stuff.

Here is a Life truth.

Forever can be found in anything. One second, 37 seconds, a lifetime, a thought, a feeling and even an experience.

The truth is that forever is found in one’s own willingness to have & accept forever.

It is a matter of decision. Basically, you decide your forever.

You decide to accept “the beautiful & the doomed” of that which is forever.

As for me? What do I like about forever?

Forever permits us to think the unthinkable.

Forever permits us to think … well … there is a chance.

Forever permits us to imagine fragile things living on and on in a world which is fairly unforgiving to fragility.

Forever, even though it sounds big in its infiniteness, can be the small key to greatness, progress and opportunity.

And the best part of forever?

Forever, in its best form, is powered by hope.

Well, maybe this is a good place to end because what is more powerful and infinite and timeless then hope? If hope doesn’t make you believe in forever, what will?

Spontaneity has given way to cautious legalisms, and the age of heroes has been superseded by a cult of specialization. We have no more giants; only obedient ants.”

―

Roger Lowenstein

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Ok. I get asked a shitload about why people do the things that they do. It seems, to me, that people inherently slot behavior into good or bad, smart or stupid and even villain or hero.

Oh. If it were only that simple.

In general:

We would wish our heroes are endowed with a fierce intellect, great <though not infallible> personal integrity, toughness tempered with essential compassion for the less fortunate, and a sense of humor.

We would like our heroes to fiercely attack life in a way that suggests they never concede that anything is someone else’s problem.

And, yet, people <who are the heroes & villains> are naturally complex and almost always filled with contradictions.In fact. The contradictions are relentless. The insidious aspect of the contradictions relentlessness is that they almost make people rethink that being a good person is relative.

The truth is that sometimes the heroes we see in today’s society are so visibly flawed it makes you think about all the moralistic mumbo jumbo we middle class white folk voice with regard to what is right and what is wrong as just being mumbo jumbo bullshit. In fact, from a moralistic standpoint, we start defining some behaviors & characteristics as .. uhm .. as if there is a difference between bad things and bad things.

Its bad. Villianry <I made up that word> gets normalized in some wacky way. What I find oddest by that is doing the right thing is actually a basic innate instinct.

We are all born with it.

We all certainly embrace the concept.

We all actually enjoy doing it.

We all like it in our heroes.

And, yet, it seems like more and more we are hesitating to demand it of our heroes <let alone ourselves).

I hesitate to suggest that Society has created this situation. Society, and culture, has certainly done its darn best to showcase the fact there is no such thing as a perfect person and that we should embrace the flaws in people.

And, for the most part, I agree with that.

But. What seems to be happening is that while the spirit of goodness and what is right and what we know we should demand from a hero <which shouldn’t contain any villain> remains, something is making the modern mind hesitate to make the demands of perfection with regard to “good” in our heroes. It almost seems like we hesitate to ask for what we want and in doing so we accept, sometimes even embrace, compromise in our heroes. (ponder that last sentence for a minute)

In our hesitation we are permitting some villains, posing as heroes in their own minds, to step forward and pose as heroes.

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“We’re born into a world where the rules are already defined. The game is out there. It’s either play or get played.”

Omar

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These villains, fake heroes, choose to play the game their own way by authentically portraying a style that allows them to be true to themselves and their personal beliefs (which are characteristics of a villain but cloaked as some hero to people).

Sigh.

But they are ants and we should be seeking giants.

We have to because these ants diminish us in a slightly insidious way.

Insidious? Yeah. It’s not that in our hesitation we decide to do the wrong thing, but rather in our silence the ‘less than the right things’ steps in and assumes control.

Oh. Please note that I purposefully say ‘diminish.’

I am certainly not going to suggest that this societal driven hesitation eliminates doing the right thing. That would be silly. That would suggest the spirit, modern or otherwise, can actually be extinguished and I do not believe that is possible. Spirit can be dampened, it can be smothered, it can be diminished, but it cannot be expunged from who and what we are as humans. But the truly insidious poison offered by ants?

It creates situations in which deserving giants receive undeserved criticism and are cut down in the attempt to make them ant sized.

My point today?

We should demand giants not ants.

We should not accept villains posing as heroes.

And while I would love to suggest that all of us should seek to be giants for today I simply state that in a difficult complex world we should not seek simple ants to be our heroes and light the way, but rather seek the real giants among us to help guide us.

Giants of the spirit of what is right and doing what is right. And, yeah, we should seek giants every day, every hour and every minute.

Society sometimes seems to be stealing our opportunity to place real heroes in their rightful place as a giant by permitting some confusion between villainry & heroism under the guise of ‘no one is perfect’. This is bad. REALLY bad.

Here is what I believe.

I believe we are in an age of heroes where society encourages less than heroic everyday behavior.

I believe we are in an age demanding giants where society encourages us to be ants.

I believe the modern spirit is not naturally a hesitant one.

I believe we are in an age where doing the right thing should be demanded — in Life & in business.

I believe we are in an age where we should be seeking to eliminate divisiveness, eliminate restrictions on ‘right behavior’ and eliminate the hesitation of the spirit.

Look. I buy the fact no one is perfect and I am even willing to accept that even our heroes can have flaws. But we should demand our heroes to be heroes and not villains who simply believe they are either a hero or offer themselves up as a hero.

There is certainly a complexity and inexactness of good and bad.

There is certainly a complexity and inexactness of the rules that are established ‘by the game of Life’ we play.

There is certainly a complexity and inexactness in Life, society & culture <in and of themselves>.

Yeah. I buy the fact our heroes will always have some complexity and inexactness.

But our heroes should be giants and not ants.

Every villain believes they are a hero in their own mind but, in our minds, we should know a villain can never be a hero.And we should not hesitate to demand a hero to be a hero and not a villain.

“If you dig deep enough, you’re going to find that everyone’s a sinner.”

Logan Echolls

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This about the fact people are imperfect, rarely 100% good, and the fact we all may be a sinner but still good.

** note: I am not using sinner in a religious framed way.

I agree with Logan (who was a character on Veronica Mars) that if you work hard enough you will find something bad, dubious, possibly unethical, in everyone’s past or even present. But you know what? It doesn’t really have to do with ‘sinning’ or being a sinner. It is just that we all have flaws. Just to be clear. It is most likely if you dig deep enough you will also find everyone is basically the same and we all have hopes & dreams & insecurities. That said. If we accept the fact everyone is a sinner, our past is flawed in some way in which the standard human being would judge it is ‘guilty of something’ then you have to accept the fact no one is innocent.

“No one is innocent … Life is more about how you bear the guilt.”

Jacques Silette

Uhm.

No one is innocent.

Ponder that.

That means every one of us sinners carry some burden of ‘not innocent’. This seems relevant as:

more and more people in today’s world are meticulously rummaging through other people’s pasts to find moments in which they were ‘guilty’ of something

more and more people in today’s society appear to investing a lot of energy suggesting they are guilty of little, if not anything

Well. That is kind of bullshit. No one is innocent. We are all guilty of small, medium and even some large things. Therefore. It within that last sentence of the quote in which resides the larger Life thought.

Your life can be defined by how you bear that guilt.

It is the larger Life thought because “defined by” is actually “choices”. All the choices we make everyday in the little and the small as well as in how we judge ourselves, and our actions, and other’s actions. So we make all of these choices, one by one, dozens & hundreds over time, all the while accumulating some aspects of non-innocence.’ From that point on it becomes how we define it:

Do you ignore it?

Do you make excuses?

Do you deny it?

Do you worry about it?

Do you keep it secret?

Do you use it to motivate?

These are questions that reside within each of us <whether we elect to admit that they exist or not>. These are the questions that define how people bear the guilt.

Oh.

The one that is probably most important?

Do you even recognize you are not innocent?

I think in today’s world where we seem to rush to blame people and judge them guilty of something <often justly> we tend to push our own lack of innocence, in whatever degree it may exist, into some dusty corner of our mind. But I also believe there is an even more dangerous thing many people do and that is justifying their own past behavior & actions as ‘not so bad’ which is basically assuming, well, innocence.

What that means is, I imagine, there are many more people who don’t even know they are ‘not innocent’ of something than there are those who bear the guilt. I imagine this because bearing some guilt is a burden. A burden not just as a weight, but it also can bear some emotional erosion aspects if you are not careful.

While those who bear the guilt can sometimes be eaten away from the inside as they think about it, I would suggest there are many more minds being eroded by the unseen, unrecognized & unaccepted shadow of guilt which dogs each step one takes.

This comes to Life in a variety of ways.

It erodes in a way that when shit happens to them <because the guilt actually affects their behavior in some seemingly small ways> they scratch their head and wonder why.

Some of these people think fate is against them.

Many of these people think Life isn’t fair.

Many of these people never look at themselves, or to themselves, as the issue … just everything else.

Many of these people just look at others as ones who should be guilty <“I never did anything that bad”>.

All of that is sad to me. Mostly because people’s burden of guilt is most likely something manageable if the person would only take the time to face it — face the guilt and eliminate that weightless, but diminishing, shadow following them and choose to carry it instead. I honestly do not know if people ignore their ‘lack of innocence’ or place their sin in a third person way <region does this> because they don’t like the thought of it or they don’t know how to explain it or maybe its simple embarrassment or it could even be they DO see the burden and do not want to accept it.

Look.

We all have guilt for something. None of us are innocent. The something could be big or it could be very small. But that is the funny thing about ‘not innocent’ — its size doesn’t matter.

Normal laws of space & weight do not apply to ‘not innocent’. A sliver of ‘not innocent’ can bear the same weight as a mountain of ‘not innocent’.

We should all take a moment, every day in fact, and remind ourselves, especially before we jump to judging others, that if you ignore the degrees & dimensions of the guilty — none of us are innocent.

But, most importantly, once you accept no one is innocent <self included> what truly matters is how one chooses to bear that weight.

“Learn to be what you are, and learn to resign with good grace all that you are not.”

Henry Frederick Emile

In the end. One of the hardest things in the world for anyone is to embrace their flaws, their sin. Each of us ‘are not’ a lot of things. Recognizing those things is actually pretty easy. We notice them all the time. I guess the difficult part is accepting them. and resigning yourself to ‘not being something’ with grace. Being able to do that is a full measure of one’s character. And maybe that is what ‘being a sinner’ or ‘no one is innocent’ is all about – character. To accept our flaws means to accept some burden possibly demands character. I do wish more people would accept we are all not innocent and begin judging people more on how they carry they bear the guilt of their sin.

While I dislike giving interviews I’ll admit this experience with Rob Estreitinho and his newsletter, The Salmon Theory, was kind of fun. Enjoy. More importantly, subscribe to Rob’s newsletter. Its a quirky intellectually philosophical shortish thought-provoking weekly read.

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Hello!

Welcome to Salmon Theory, a (for now, daily, because of *waves at all the things*) newsletter about philosophy, strategy and hope, now trusted by ~2,400 of you.

One of the greatest joys of this newsletter is the replies I get. And over time, some people become more active and more engaged, to the point where we have actual deep conversations about all things business, life, strategy, philosophy, and so on.

Bruce McTague is one of those people. For 90% of the things I’ve written, he has his own version of that thought on his blog, and I always steal something from his writing because, well, he’s pretty good at stealing from elsewhere too. Gentleman thief.

So I decided that now was a good time to interview Bruce. He’s a business and marketing consultant, has a giant brain for principled thinking, and… look, just read the interview below. I promise it will be worth your time.

I am Rob. You are here. Sit back. Relax. Let’s do this.

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Bruce, thanks for doing this. How did you get to where you are?

It was a winding road. After getting an MBA, my father had a swanky job lined up at a big bank therefore I, of course, wrangled a job at the first non-NYC advertising agency to win agency of the year in Greenville, SC. It was in media on P&G. I got an indoctrination in spot media (from Benton & Bowles), network media (from Compton), P&G branding, technology (I was one of five people given a computer – mostly to run onerous crosstabs and analyse data for insights and learning) and female leadership (my first boss was an amazing woman, Polly Goodrich-Reese, who could do a reach/frequency by hand faster than we could on a computer, and yet knew technology was the future).

I spent 50%+ of my days in account management offices picking their brains and 50% of my off hours getting my job done. From there it was into account management (Bloom/Publicis Mid-America, Bozell, JWT). I became (they claimed) the youngest VP Bozell/NY ever had (heady stuff for a 29 year old) then proceeded to quit to go to JWT.

JWT is where I honed my brand planning skills (or whatever skills I have there). Unlike England, the US was slow to embrace brand planning, so if you were a savvy account director who embraced brand planning, and had a good research director in your hip pocket, you could have a hybrid brand planning/account management role. So that’s what I did. Even became a corporate “Thompson Way” trainer.

I eventually was a New Business Director at a $350mm shop, but I’ve also been a brand planning director, COO of a small agency (trying a virtual creative department) and now, having embraced the fact I am more a generalist than I am an advertising person, consult with businesses on, well, everything. I have found that, while businesses think they have one problem, in a complex business world it is actually a multi-faceted problem (or opportunity). And a lot of business people like someone who sees complexity as expansive, not a problem.

Anyway.

What I found was I was always chasing more. More knowledge, more experience, more experiences, more responsibility, ways of looking at things, more books, more. Not more things, just an insatiable interest in learning things. Paradoxically, it has given me more than I have ever dreamed while also giving me less of some fairly important things (never married, don’t really have a place I call home – I’m more of a nomad).

I will also admit chasing more included chasing a space in which there was no politics. Agency politics are a sonuvabitch. All I ever chased was doing the right thing and doing good shit and, well, politics isn’t really conducive to that. I was actually pretty good at navigating client politics, able to weave my way through landmines and bludgeon my way through the Peter Principle management, but was never good at agency politics. That particular chasing did not serve me well the farther I got into my advertising career. On reflection, I am not sure if my stubbornness on this made me reject the advertising world, or if the advertising world rejected me because of my stubbornness.

While I love what I do now, I would be lying if I didn’t say that walking into an advertising agency, any one, feels like coming home.

Why do you do what you do?

Thinking is breathing to me. I’d die if I weren’t thinking.

I imagine the corollary to this is that many of the people around me want me to die because it can make me a pain in the ass.

Regardless. I like turning thinking into a specific type of doing. I imagine, if I am honest, I like to fix things. I like to fine tune things. I always believe something can be better than it is. I believe there is nothing that cannot be fixed. That, by the way, is a path fraught with peril (because some things defy fixing).

I do what I do because I don’t know how to do anything else other than what I am doing. Wow. That last sentence sounds pitiful. But it’s not. I love being ‘in the game.’ I love thinking and learning and, well, ‘the agony of defeat and thrill of victory.’

How do you speed your brain up?

I don’t. It always is running. It may not be fast, but it’s always running. It’s always collecting things. I am a collector of ideas, people, experiences, whatever. I don’t care. I have hundreds of notes scribbled on random pieces of paper which, as Dave Snowden point out in a fabulous video, looks chaotic but I know where almost everything can be found. I like my brain to collect things. On a separate note, this makes me a wonderful conversationalist at parties if anyone wants to invite me.

All that said. If I want to force clarity, I don’t speed it up, I actually do something like going for a run, or listening to music. And, all of a sudden, the pieces I have collected rearrange, get pulled off of dusty brain shelves, and fall into place on something I am thinking about.

How do you slow your brain down?

This question made me think. When I was younger, everyone kept on telling me to slow down, take a break, find other things to do. And I tried. I really did try. But I never got it. I couldn’t understand why anyone would ever want to slow their brain down. So I eventually stopped listening to everyone and I actually cram it with things.

What I found was if I keep putting things into it, all of a sudden things fall into place (an intersection of multiple pieces of crap I threw into it). Is that ‘slowing down’? Shit. I don’t know. It may actually be a weird version of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow (a book which I loved) but I imagine a part of ‘slowing it down’ is simply encountering an existing idea, thought or group of words that centre a number of random thoughts that are swirling around in my brain. Maybe I consider ‘slowing down’ as simply clarity.

I will say that I am not sure I recommend this attitude to anyone. It works for me but that may be partially what makes me mad.

Which two fields should talk more to one another? What should they talk about?

I, personally, believe everyone should picture the most opposite of what they do or how they see themselves and then go and spend a week with them. I will make a sweeping ‘talk more’ wish – people should talk more with everyone. The best of the best philosophers have a knack for communicating the abstract in a way that, well, seems tangibly useful. I would note ‘tangibly useful’ is, well, an incredibly useful skill for brand planners, strategists or anyone in the advertising business.

That said. My two fields.

The thinkers should take more to the unseen workers. The janitors, garbage collectors, the landscapers, the maids. They should talk about hopes, dreams and daily fears, wants and needs. They will find they have more in common than in differences. As the new documentary play about West Virginia coal mine country says, “they (people in NYC) think we are stupid, we’re not. We’re just from West Virginia.”

It’s all about perspective. It’s all about context.

I spend a lot of time observing people and always have but it’s a specific type of observing. This may sound odd, but while I always believe everyone has a story (trite I know), more importantly is I believe everyone has a certain gravity. Maybe it’s kind of like carrying a weight. Traditional brand planners may call this ‘a problem to be solved.’ That always seemed to simplify a personal aspect too much to me.

I always felt like if I could identify that weight, that burden, me – as a fixer – could seek to get them unstuck or fixed. The tricky part is many people only give you the superficial weight and it’s up to you to find the gravity.

That may all sound esoteric but, getting back to the question, I believe if the ‘thinkers’, the futurists, the brand planners, the behavioural science wonks, could talk more with the people who truly aren’t unhappy with their life, but are still trying to figure out how to get through each day, maybe we would stop trying to sell people ‘up’ on a way of life, but connect people in ways maybe even they haven’t thought about – and, of course, sell shit as a marketer/advertiser along the way.

On a separate note. That’s why Zach Mercurio’s work with janitors and car wash employees are so interesting to me.

What’s something everyone could do with a bit more of?

Read. Anything. And talk about what they read.

It was Arturo Perez-Revarte, whose first four books are spectacular, who wrote “Everything has to do with everything else. Life is a succession of events that link with each other whether we want them to or not.” If you read a story to your child, there is a moral. If you read someone’s Twitter thread, there is an opinion. If you read Michener, there is perspective. If you read this newsletter, there is intellectual twisting (what I call bending the mind’s perspective). And if you read anything, there are words and combinations of words which always seem to capture your mind’s attention.

I don’t have to agree with everything I read and, yet, love the words that speak to me. So maybe what I am suggesting isn’t really we need a bit more of reading, maybe it’s just we all need to inhale more words. How about that?

In general, I dislike business books and the advertising books are few and far between. Ogilvy, Book of Gossage, a 1915 book How Advertising Pays, Disruption (Dru), loved The Choice Factory, Grant’s Brand Innovation Manifesto and New Marketing Manifesto are essentials, Decoded and my St. Luke’s book is dog eared (but mostly for business consulting thinking) and Hugh McLeod’s How to be Creative/Hughtrain Manifesto are all must reading.

The business books I think advertising folk should read is Tom Peters Thriving on Chaos (his best book by far), Toffler’s books will all make you wonder why we think anything we talk about today as ‘new’, Cluetrain Manifesto and a new book – Mike Walsh’s The Algorithmic Leader. Oh. And Calvin & Hobbes. Perspective.

What’s something everyone could do with a bit less of?

Whining. Complaining seems to be a default these days. This is probably a reflection of the fixer in me. For example, I never understood why an agency said “I don’t want to be measured on sales because I am not responsible for everything that contributes to sales.’ Jesus. What a copout. In for a penny, in for a pound. I would look around the conference room table and say ‘quit making excuses and let’s make some business.’

Complaining, to me, seems to have an unhealthy underbelly – fear of risk, fear of failure, fear of, well, fear. I will never control everything. Shit. Control is an illusion. Get on with getting on and be accountable to what you do. Complaining is wasted energy. Maybe worse, complaining is really fear of doing what is right.

What’s the last thing you changed your mind on?

I chuckled. I bet I just changed my mind as I wrote this. Because I am permanently collecting ideas, words and thoughts, I constantly renovate ideas and my thoughts. I imagine I have some unchanging laws, axioms, postulates (I get them all mixed up) but, in general, the only unchanging belief I have is with regard to gravity, thoughts and attitudes.

I believe most things have a natural arc (a sense of gravity) and while some ideas fight that gravity for a bit, over time things will progress in a better way. I think thoughts and attitudes work the same way. The Cluetrain Manifesto, Herd, Toffler’s 3 books (Future Shock, Third Wave, Powershift) all are about gravity and how to fight gravity (or change its formula) if you want to view trends and societal waves.

I imagine, thinking about this, this could appear like I have no gravity. I do. Integrity, dignity, doing what’s right, optimal risk. My gravity bends my behaviour and thoughts (for good or for bad). Maybe those are my unchanging laws. I tend to believe people should (seriously) think about that shit maybe more than they do.

Everyone’s a bit mad. How are you mad?

I’m perpetually dissatisfied with what I know.

It’s odd. Years ago, I wrote a white paper about early age learning where I pointed that the education system needs to be careful because if they do education properly young people, students, will constantly be frustrated (because the more you learn the more you learn how much you don’t know). My madness possibly resides in my embrace of always being ignorant.

I deal with it in a variety of ways. It’s like Taleb said: “clever people become more clever by being with people cleverer than they are.” I constantly, and have always, sought out the smartest, most skilled/qualified, people and placed myself as close to them as possible. I want to be at the same table as these people.

Oddly, some people have seen this as arrogance that I see myself ‘as smart as they’ or I belong in their sphere worthy of debating/discussing things with them. It’s odd to me because all it ever does is showcase, to me, how ignorant or how ‘lesser than’ I am. I imagine I am slightly mad to always seek to be in situations where you never know the most or constantly feel behind intellectually, but I salve my madness by judging myself on “better today than I was yesterday, better tomorrow than I am today.”

Yeah. I’ll die mad, but happy.

What gives you hope?

Well. People. Mostly the everyday people who have little (the ‘have nots’ if you want to label them). Despite being a privileged white male with two college degrees, I was lucky enough early in my career to, through work, visit rural West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Minnesota and more. Inner cities in a number of cities. I’ve also visited rural France, Ukraine, and seen and heard the same.

There is no ‘give’ or ‘give up’ in these people. They have the same hopes and dreams for their families and children. They aren’t stupid. They just live in different places doing different things. This is true in any business you work at or with. There is a person working in the shipping department, accounting, cleaning crew, and so on, who know shit I will never know, see things in ways I will never see, and, yet, have similar hopes and dreams as I do.

I owe them listening because sometimes I can make things happen, and they cannot. And sometimes I cannot do things and, yet, they give me hope I can the next time.

Anyway. Personally, I don’t understand the whole ‘people don’t change their minds’ rhetoric. I have only seen people, addressed respectfully with well-articulated thoughts, who listen closely, are curious, and hungry for a better way of not only thinking about things but doing things. These people give me hope.

Just to note. I am a hope guy. I believe taking people’s hope away from them is one of the most heinous crimes one could commit. On the other hand, I also believe hope is one of the most resilient characteristics in existence. It’s like a super Kevlar to a world constantly trying to dent people.

One final thought.

I feel like I was one of the luckiest people in business. I was never the smartest nor the most ambitious, but I was always surrounded by incredibly smart mentors who saw that the more freedom they gave me the better I would be. Throughout my career I found ‘herders’ not dictators. That was lucky.

When people ask me my favourite boss, I cannot answer one. From the account director who laid on his back on the floor under his desk, with a world map taped to it, who said “I just want to see the world differently”, to Polly, a woman in a man’s world, who tirelessly explained why things mattered. I had dozens, all of whom taught me something a little bit different, and I have ended up an accumulation of all of them.

When people ask me about my best job, I cannot answer one. My first agency was a cauldron brimming with Burnett, JWT, Bates, Dancer, BBDO, Benton & Bowles trained talent. Bloom in Dallas (then Publicis Mid America) was a place where talent jostled each other everyday and then played together at night. JWT was, well, JWT and the office I was at spawned numerous independent agencies. Even the agency with a world class brand consulting group intersected me with some of the smartest business consultants I have ever run across.

I have hated leaving almost every place I worked. It’s the people, not the work. I think everyone should remember that.

I get businesses unstuck (90% of the time that simply means helping them get out of their own way). That’s what I do. This discussion most typically revolves around Taleb’s concept of Antifragile. And while I find Nassim Taleb whipsmart trying to explain Antifragile in a pragmatic business sense, and business environment, is semi-impossible (or at least beyond my intellectual capabilities).

Suffice it to say almost every business I have ever interacted with has struggled with balancing, or applying proportionate effort, pragmatism and possibilities – standardized process and agility/vision to meet opportunities. Most businesses see them as binaries where I see them as malleable. Most businesses see them as an organism and I see them as molecular. That said. While I love conceptual discussions (and actually believe the future of business will be owned by the ones who can think conceptually) my job is to frame in the abstract and deliver in the concrete – balancing idealism and realism. I call it ‘’pragmatism and possibilities’ and suggest its all about having your feet in the clouds and head on the ground.

Suffice it to say that 99% of the best businesses have figured out how to successfully keep their feet in the clouds and their head on the ground.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it looks like I got it twisted around, but I did not. Good businesses are always walking with the future in mind. Always traveling toward possibilities. Always seeking ‘what’s next.’

Good businesses are always closely listening to the drumbeat of the feet of what is happening around them. Ear to the ground insuring everyone in the business is keeping their head in the game today. I have called it mastering pragmatism & possibilities. But, in reality, it is the ability to have your feet in the clouds and head on the ground.

I tend to believe if more people thought about it this way businesses would actually manage their pragmatism better (i.e., maximize existing resources in an agile way), would have more hope (i.e., maximize opportunities that arise better) and achieve more possibilities than they could ever imagine.

You have to admit the current definition – feet on the ground & head in the clouds – just ain’t working that well these days. Businesses seem to be more woefully stagnant <albeit always ‘talking’ change> and have more despair and lack of hope with regard to actionable possibilities than ever.

Why? Well. I am sure I could invest dozens of pages sharing thoughts on why, but instead I will focus on what I would consider the intellectual aspects, i.e., what is going on in with our attitudes that affect our heads, how we think and how we approach these things.

** note: if one were to need a playbook on how to discuss pragmatism & possibilities with a business this is as good a place to start as any – deconstructing each issue.

Issue one. over-simplification

Suffice it to say we have devolved into a society of sound bites. This is true in business even moreso. In business it seems to be all about simplicity. In everyday Life it is ‘summarize it for me’ or ‘oh, it’s simple <insert some explanation here>.’ In the end I can’t figure out if should be pointing the finger at us or them.

Them <management & leadership> because they think we are not capable of understanding some form of complexity and therefore they only offer up simplified versions of what needs to be communicated.

Or us <the employees> because we either:

<a> demand a sound bite under the guise of ‘we only have time for the headline’

<b> we only latch on to the fragment of the whole which we believe summarizes the whole.

Therefore I will point the finger at all of us and them. Here is a Truth.

Most things are just not that simple, in fact, they are complex. An effect can have multiple causes and a cause can have multiple effects. I say this despite the fact, naturally, we would like all the dominoes to line up one after another and when one falls the next naturally is impacted and falls. Causality is just an easier thing to grasp.

Well. Things don’t really work that way. Especially in a business environment. Maybe in a controlled test environment but, in business, events are typically bombarded from a variety of directions and while not all causes are created equal <some can impact more than others> most things are too complex to be simplified into ‘one thing.’ And, yet, we oversimplify again and again and again.

Over simplifying simply means ignoring complexities.

Over simplifying simply means being consciously ignorant.

Over simplifying … well … just doesn’t work in the long run.

It eases you through the moment only to have to doubly <or exponentially> invest energy later on. Let me put this as simply as I can: over simplification just doesn’t work.

Instead of dumbing things down to some simplistic sound bite we need to raise the level of general understanding & knowledge to the level of complexity of the ideas & systems in which a business works – in other words, unravel the complexity into understandable components. Factually, seconds of involvement <sound bites> versus minutes of involvement <deeper complex discussion> leads to degrees of real knowledge, i.e., seconds leads to shallow knowledge or let’s call it ‘less knowledgeable.’ Over simplification will not demystify uncertainty and cannot help us do what we really need to do — reconcepting & rethinking that which is (which is the portal to unlocking potential).

What I am suggesting is difficult and uncertain work. But certainly more satisfying and inspiring when we solve and recreate and it certainly is a more effective way to keep your feet in the clouds and head on the ground..

I can unequivocally state that the fate of possibilities for a business, any business, lies in balance if we don’t invest in the hard work of ‘non over simplification.’

And worse? We won’t solve any of the problems we face if we do not address this.

This leads me to …

Issue two. being intellectually insightful is about hard work.

Let me begin by suggesting that good ideas cannot be decided by number of tweet votes in favor of. Business ideas do not compete on American Idol nor, frankly, should they compete in any larger group. We are not all judges <and probably shouldn’t be on American Idol either>.

Why? Good ideas are rarely popular; therefore, I don’t really want a business idea to win some meaningless popularity contest. If we really want to do what needs to be done to maximize both the pragmatism & the possibilities in business we have to hunker down and work hard … work hard in that we need to use what we have to rethink things … use all aspects including economic thought and philosophy and the past … all of which means dealing with ambiguity and contradiction.

And, yes, that is hard work. That is the kind of work that hones the intellectual insightfulness necessary to keep your feet in the clouds and your feet on the ground and, well, make progress. Smart progress.

Instead of dumbing things down we need to be raising the level of general understanding to the level of complexity of the systems in which we are embedded and which are embedded in us. And while you may balk at something like ‘intellectual insightfulness’ as too far reaching or ‘elitist’ … suffice it to say we just need to be smarter … less ignorant … more enlightened <open to additional thoughts> and more involved in the difficult and uncertain work of demystification and reconcepting ideas and systems in which we live in and … well … just plain rethinking shit.

Suffice it to say that there is nothing simple when talking about world-changing ideas … because talking will not simply make the world change.

I read somewhere recently that ‘if you remove this boundary … the only boundary left is our imagination.’

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Imagination is important, but even imagination is complicated and difficult and tends to not offer tidy solutions. Especially if you don’t invest in the hard work.

We need to be doing more of ‘using your imagination within the box of what exists.’ We don’t need to be wandering aimlessly ‘outside the box’ but rather using our imagination insightfully and creatively WITHIN the box and expand the boundaries.

It is all hard work, but hard work will work. And in this case I mean hard thinking work.

Simply ‘doing’ aint gonna cut it. We need to be smarter. And whether you think about thinking this way or not, it ain’t about staring off into space doing nothing <random dreaming>, thinking is a blue collar job. Thinking is all about work. Hmmmmmm … it is quite possible that what I just wrote defines “head on the ground” better than anything I have ever written before.

Anyway. As a corollary to issue number two …

Issue three. innovation is not <just> technology.

What makes oversimplification even more challenging is that for some reason we seem to be associating innovation with technology … and just technology. We can’t … and shouldn’t.

This type of thinking leads us to possibly believe technology innovations will eventually solve all problems and maximize everyone’s Life as some point. That is a very dangerous idea.

It is dangerous because in reality if we focus just on technology as the solution we are actually preventing the real change we need. It’s a very dangerous idea because it completely removes the human aspect. I cannot tell people how often I need to remind everyone technology augments humans (if you seek potential & possibilities), not humans augmenting technology.

Regardless. Minds need to innovate too. Thinking and attitudes need to evolve and innovate. New thought systems, economic systems and systems in which people live eat and breath all need to evolve and that happens through innovation <whether technology is involved or not>. Technology is simply a path that runs parallel to culture <or society> basically amplifying everything that is happening on the parallel path <the corollary to that is … with nothing to amplify the technology remains silent>.

Technology and culture and people and business are entangled. Everything is connected with everything. Technologies may enable new ways of doing things as well as thinking. This effects culture so culturally we need to innovate to structure how those technologies will be involved in our lives <so that we can dictate a little how they are incorporated> and we need to innovate our thinking and culture so that we can actually impact how technology evolves <so that we can dictate how what technology is innovated in some form or fashion>.

At the moment it seems like we respond to technology rather than proactively drive technology. Yes. Technology has certainly dramatically improved the overall quality of business but, at some point, technology is not a reason for being, but rather simply an enabler for being. The paradox is that the system we have now may make amazing new technology possible, but at same time is creating such cultural conflict that maximizing technology ‘what could be’ seems impossible. We need to innovate the systems in which technology exists.

Economically, culturally and philosophically. All systems need to see innovation.

Issue four. adaptability does not mean ‘no strategy’.

Businesses inherently like structure. They see structure as replicable (safe, efficient & maintaining whatever level of effectiveness they have currently attained). The problem is emphasizing structure, pragmatism, actually increases the fragility of a business (source: antifragile) and limits the scope/horizon view of pursuing possibilities. With a ‘feet on the ground’ philosophy structure & construct of resources/systems/process dictate the direction, velocity and vision of the business. In other words, pragmatism is the source of possibilities. If you flip the equation, pragmatism becomes the enabler of possibilities. This does not mean a business has no strategy, all it does is maximize flexibility & agility to pragmatically apply resources to possibilities as they arise. Taleb calls this AntiFragile, Toffler called it the polymalleable organization, HBR has called it “Agile”, I call it “feet in the clouds, head on the ground” or “managing pragmatism & possibilities.” Call it whatever you want but it is the issue a business needs to address in order to be successful in the future.

<that’s it for my issues>

Look.

Hope and possibilities grounded with enlightened pragmatism abound in today’s business world if you look hard enough <and have your feet in the clouds an head to the ground>. But none of it comes easy. These types of things are rarely just given, they need to be earned mostly thru hard work.

I don’t believe simplicity is bad.

I don’t believe being optimistic or having a positive attitude is bad.

I don’t believe technology is bad.

I don’t believe hard work, smartly done, is bad.

But we seem trapped in the old paradigm of “head in the clouds & feet on the ground.” This old paradigm kind of separates work & thinking <vision> in a non useful way. And I … well … I admit I sometimes think this paradigm encourages a slightly warped version of some lazy thinking.

And we cannot be lazy moving forward. And we certainly cannot afford to be lazy thinkers. For in this type of laziness lurks ignorance and it is ignorance we should fear. Not any ideological argument or technological innovation which inserts itself into our daily lives but ignorance.

“Consent yourself to be an organ of your highest thought, and lo! suddenly you put all men in your debt, and are the fountain of an energy that goes pulsing on with waves of benefit to the borders of society, to the circumference of things.”

In the end.

Effective business has always been about applying the right resources at the right time against the right opportunity (or challenge). Period.

Efficient business has always been about applying resources in a consistent way all the time to be applied against the opportunities that exist. Period.

Agility resides in the optimization betwixt the two. Either, alone, is fragile. The fragile mixture, proportionate focus, of the two actually makes one Antifragile (stealing from Taleb). That said. A business is most likely able to find the optimal proportion by, well, keep their head to the ground and their feet in the clouds.

Consent yourself to be of your highest thought.

And how do you do that? Keep your feet in the clouds and your head on the ground. Be pragmatic and explore possibilities.

“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”

Winston Churchill

————–

So. Several of my friends give me crap because of some of the obscure things I have stored away in my pea like brain <because I tend to read random obscure things and store it all away>. Therefore they ask me random obscure questions to see what I have stored away. The random question this time?

What is the strongest bridge in the world?

My answer? Hope. Hope is the strongest bridge in the world.

Well. It was a flippant response on my part, but it kind of made everyone at the table sit back and hesitate because it is one of those rare insightful non-smartass flippant responses.

Ok. First.

To be clear. I am not a psychologist <nor psychiatrist> nor am I a behavioral scientist <possible a mad scientist though – a childhood goal>. I say that because I may just not know jackshit. But here’s what I think.

Lots of discussions about the strongest motivators/demotivators on human behavior seem to revolve around fear, love, self esteem, hate , etc. <Maslow stuff>, however, I tend to believe that all these experts overlook hope.

Research digs deep down into the moments of minutiae with regard to why we do the things we do. Heck. That is how the best companies in the world attempt to derive strategies to make their companies <and products & services> a success in people’s heads, hearts & wallets. In my own pea–like brain something shadows each response found in research … hope.

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“The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope.”

Frank Lloyd Wright

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I imagine Hope is so often overlooked as something impactful or something we should pay attention to because it is stealthily present in everything. Yup. Everything. Attitudes & behaviors. Thoughts & actions. And because of its omnipresence it gets overlooked as “non differentiator.”

“Non differentiator”. Absurd. It is everything. It is what someone called “the well of self” which can permit you to begin again and again and again. It is an energy for resilience and progress.

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“Hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible.”

William Sloane Coffin

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Everyone wants to be aroused by the possible. And I am not even talking about this in the grandiose abstract <dreams and such> but even in the drivel of the day.

A grocery shopper has the simple hope that everything will be found as quickly as possible.

A coffee drinker hopes that the first sip is everything they expected <and desired>.

A father hopes his daughter has a good day at school.

You get it.

Hope isn’t often the really big things it is in the gazillion little things that happen in everyday life as well as the big “I want a better life” type things.

And maybe that is why I flippantly suggested it is the strongest bridge in the world. It is:

– strong enough to span generations of years.

– strong enough to span yesterday to tomorrow

– strong enough to span the micro-second subconscious thought.

So. As a corrolary to the thought that Hope is an energy source I would then suggest that losing hope deprives someone of an essential structure in Life. They lose the bridge to, well, make it in Life. To be able to get from here to there. To withstand the journey from disappointment today to expectations of a better tomorrow.

Now. That said.

I do believe more of those who actually have hope to share should share it <pragmatically> with those who struggle to reach that bridge.

Yes. I do believe professionally I am a ‘dealer of hope.’

Yes. I do believe all forms of hope, realistic and unrealistic, are better than no hope at all.

Yes. I do believe the moment you have lost sight of how to see, or reach out and touch, hope you have entered some version of Hell.

Sure. Life offers a multitude of disappointments. Life is not easy. But I fear it becomes unliveable without hope because then disappointment becomes infinite in a finite Life. That, my friends, sounds overwhelming distressing even as I type it.

John Lennon suggested people like me, believers in hope, are dreamers.

Well. Maybe. But Martin Luther King also said this:

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“The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to …”

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In a way a secure livable world lies with those dreamers. We disciplined nonconformists. Or maybe more pragmatically — bridge builders.

The resilience of Hope lies in we happy few. We happy disciplined nonconformists. We happy believers in hope despite what appears to be an infinite disappointment. We happy few who have bridges to share.

We happy few who constantly drink from the well of self and, well, know how to begin again.

So, yes, the strongest bridge in the world is Hope. As a corollary, maybe the most valuable career one can have is to be a builder of Hope bridges.

“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.”

==

Jean-Luc Picard

—————-

Well.

How often do we get the question “what went wrong?’ and instead of discussing all our shortcomings & failings, or come up with all the excuses <reasonable & unreasonable>, we shrugged our shoulders and said “Life.”

Uhm.

Not often. We get the question often but rarely answer “life.”

Why?

It is socially unacceptable these days to suggest you can work hard, and even work smartly, and you can still lose.

It is socially unacceptable these days to suggest you made no mistakes and you can still lose.

And, let me be clear, I am writing this as a guy who always looks at things that don’t work out, or I have ‘lost’ and point the finger at myself for what I missed or what I could have done or what I wish I had noticed/seen/ paid attention to.

But <let me be clear part 2> … sometimes you can do everything right, make no mistakes, and lose.

Is it fair?

Shit.

I don’t know.

I just know it is Life.

And it is kind of silly to not recognize this.

Now. I am not suggesting this becomes your go-to excuse or answer … I am simply suggesting that sometimes it is good to recognize that simply working hard <and smartly> or making no mistakes guarantees a win … and if you don’t win than ‘you didn’t work hard enough”, “you didn’t work smart enough” or “you must have made a mistake.”

I say this because we have created a culture, business and Life, in which if you don’t win <or lets say ‘improve your current status’> you have done something wrong. And that is crazy <to think that in every case>.

Personally, I tend to like non winners who show up day in and day out.

I like the ones with no quit <even when they don’t win>.

The ones who tend to be last to give up.

The ones who tend to be the last to leave.

The ones who tend to be the last to keep trying.

And, maybe most importantly, the ones who tend to be the last to hold on to integrity, sense of self, principled behavior and values.

I can teach & coach people to stop or what to hold on to and what to let go of. It is more difficult to teach someone to ‘go.’

All I know for sure is that the world is absolutely full of people who quit. They will come up with a variety of quite reasonable reasons <one is ‘change direction’ which is often a fancy schmancy term for ‘give up’>, but suffice it to say … they quit.

Because they don’t want to be the last – they want to be first.

Look. Give me a team who doesn’t care if they win, but will never quit and I can guarantee you they will kick more ass in Life & in business than 99% of everyone else.

Regardless. Here is the deal <some Life truths>.

Not everyone can finish first.

Not everyone who finishes first did it the best, with no mistakes or worked the hardest.

Not everyone who didn’t finish first made some mistake or didn’t work hard.

That is Life.

And that is Life everywhere.

Anyway. I think this may be one of the hardest lessons to learn … and to teach.

In general we suck at teaching this lesson and struggle to even admit it is a Life truth.

“Truth itself is an emergent distinction. It’s not a noun; it’s more of a verb.”

Peter Joseph

——————–

I had the privilege to speak with some high school students on a variety of topics … & opinions, facts & truth came up (as, of course, opinions & beliefs were being discussed). I got to share 1 of my favorite quotes.

Look. Far too often we speak of truths in absolutes and, even worse, suggest an individual fact represents truth. Both of these things are actually the nemesis of truth.

Truths are dependent upon knowledge and, well, knowledge is not only contextual to situations but is also evolving as new learning occurs. In other words, truth is emergent.

And for those who state they stand on a fact as truth, to mangle a Dr. Jason Fox thought, “conviction means you become a convict to something.”An individual fact, tightly held, is simply a cage in which you are the convict holding tight on to a conviction of which the only way you get freed is to actually let go of that conviction and seek numerous facts and the knowledge that comes along with them.

In general, when speaking of truth, we should all be annoyed with specificity and simplicity. What I mean by that is a layered truth demands more than the simplistic specificity that can be found in one, individual, fact. Let me define how i view facts, knowledge and truth (and their relationship).

Facts. Facts are everywhere. an individual fact is nice to know but, in isolation, does not represent a full truth.

An absence of a fact is typically the root of any conspiracy theory (or false argument). “There is no proof, it is not” never trumps “there is proof that it is.”

Truth. Truth is a coherence of knowledge (combinations of facts) into a cohesive unit of facts. This means that truth adapts to changing knowledge (not individual facts).

While I’m not sure I got it all exactly right i do believe i was able to get some young people to understand one fact is simply a step toward truth and that truth, itself, is layered and often complex.

This leads me to the societal nemesis of truth – this whole ‘anti-intellectualism’ thing. I honestly don’t understand the whole anti-intellectual thing. I have tried, but the tangled web eludes me. Its quite possible knowledge, which is exponentially different than common sense (which isn’t really that common), is caught up the whole “establishment is bad” thing.

It almost seems like every existing infrastructure, let’s call it ‘establishment’, is being painted as “bad, stupid & incompetent.’ And they are not. Saying all politicians are worthless, or media is all tainted and crooked, or all science is driven by a liberal agenda, is as bad as me saying all old white men are sexist, xenophobic asshats.

We treat establishment as if it is one big conspiracy theory which is a little out of my realm of belief. The victim of this odd attack on establishment and those who have real factual knowledge is, well, truth. Truth is dependent upon facts & knowledge well used and well-honed in the battlefield of thinking & thought. Without it the intellectual debate resides on the superficial surface of anything meaningful.

“Is being an investigator the opposite of being an artist? Maybe it is just that some mysteries require an artist not an investigator. That an artist has different ways to get to the truth.”

Tibetan thought

Ponder this.

The path to truth is not just one path. Sure. I may know one ‘truth.’ But in knowing that I know … well … one thing. And I am sure many people are fine with the knowledge of one truth. And I do not begrudge them of that. For one truth is, at its core, a truth. And I believe everyone needs some truth in their life.

Does knowing more than one truth <if there truly is such a thing> make someone better? Yikes. I don’t believe I could be a good judge of that. Because knowing multiple truths can be confusing and in confusion someone just may not end up in a better place. I guess I would suggest that if multiple truths put you on more solid ground than go for it.

But the real point to this is that someone without YOUR knowledge is more likely to teach you something completely new than someone who shares your knowledge.

And, ultimately, if you are trying to understand the world, or simply solve a problem, to truly learn the answer you may have to turn your back on some things you know and face someone who knows some other facts, has some other knowledge and may even be able to share some new truths.

On a separate note (maybe on my mind because I was speaking with students).

I will say, as I discuss facts, knowledge & truth, I find the entire concept of ‘future-proof skills” absurd. There is no such thing as a future-proof skill. Okay. Maybe active learning (but I don’t think that is a skill). Which leads me to the thing that always makes me chuckle whenever I get pulled into some ‘future skills’ discussion. Its “Technique for Producing Ideas” by James Webb Young. Published in 1940 written by a man who developed these ‘skills’ in the 1920’s. The entire book is about ‘future-proofing skill development.” 1920’s. 1940. 2020. What was, is, and will be.

Anyway.

I would suggest that Truth is a puzzling maze for anyone to navigate — good person or bad person.

Facts come and go. We have as many of them floating around as stars in the sky.

Knowledge demands some creativity in combination of facts (think seeing constellations in a night sky), some hard work (to gather the most appropriate facts) and some wisdom (to discard less relevant facts).

“We must live in the best way this existence that has been given to us, embracing the flow of events. It is up to us to try in every moment of our life to do our best.”

—

The Branches of Time

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So. A better business world. I imagine everyone feels this is an important objective, but:

Not everyone would define better the same

Not all better is created equal

Not all businesses believe a better world is the way to become better

In fact. On the third point I would suggest this is where ‘business improvers’ (consultants, gurus, futurists, etc) step in and play a role. The majority of business fixers fall into one of 2 camps:

The “let’s make your business run more efficiently” people. They’ll discuss process, simplification and digital transformation. Yes. They’ll couch efficiency in some nice fluffy narratives, but in the end they are simply suggesting the machine isn’t running as well as it could and needs to be finetuned or rebuilt. They see behavior as the be all end all.

The “people potential” people. They’ll discuss, well, people. How to get people to work better together, how to build an environment in which they are engaged (with caring AND process/tools/digital) and how to foster a healthy culture. They see attitudes as important as behaviors.

That said.

Ask any business leader and they will:

(a) always believe something in the business could be better &

(b) always be seeking to make things better.

Period.

I do not know one leader who is completely satisfied or, on the flip side of the coin, believe a business is maximizing its potential & opportunities.

Here is where different ‘betters’ start coming into play.

Most leaders address a desire to be better transactionally (albeit they may, on occasion, frame it as a ‘structural organizational betterment’). Yet, “better”, when one views it from a ‘world’ perspective, demands addressing structural elements. This includes engagement (which far too often business people think of transactionally).

Ah. Engagement.

Everyone knows the key to maximum productivity and maximizing business potential is engagement. Always has been and always will be. I would note that ‘engagement’ fans always focus on ‘people’ (working together, understanding vision, embracing meaningful work). but engagement, in a business eyes, often expands out to engagement with process, engagement with technology, engagement with machines/production lines, engagement with ‘system tools’ of which people are often the most critical aspect, yet, business will measure engagement “with” something, not “by” someone. That phrase distinction may be one of the most important thoughts I will share today. Ponder it.

But let’s go back to the people/human component … and transactionally. Despite all the discussion around culture (which is when people decide how they want to behave on a coherent fashion) the truth is most businesses try to ‘create engagement’ (which is a problem in & of itself) through transactional methods (which is a problem). Carrots & sticks. Incentives. “Bribes” (free lunches, ping pong tables, flex times, laptops, etc.). Not only is this not effective (at least in terms of creating long term systemic behavior), but it also shows a lack of understanding in what people truly care about.

All that said.

The business world knows it needs to change. I would suggest younger people feel more strongly about structurally addressing this then older business people who have learned to suffer/live in the business environment & therefore feel more like transactional things are the most pragmatic ways to ‘change it.’

The issue is that the gap between ‘knowing’ and actually ‘doing’ is a real sonuvabitch to cross.

I would suggest the key to crossing this gap is not in the ‘specialists’ or the experts in how things are already being done, the key exists in people who know enough about some specific skill to lay a pragmatic foundation and have the ability to see a new way to build to possibilities. I would suggest there are a number of these people out there who embrace that idea – Daniel Mezick, Perry Timms, Gustavo Razzetti, Neils Pflaeging, Edwin Van der Geest, the Corporate Rebels folks. While each of them may approach it a little differently, the business world needs more of these type of ideas/people if it truly wants to get better. We need more connectors, aligners, maybe call them the chiropractors of a better way of doing business and a better world.

Look.

Better business needs a structural change. Period.

Better business needs a vision, not transactional changes. Period.

Better business needs an attitudinal adjustment (toward organizational structure, toward how people skills can be maximized, toward how productivity is viewed, toward what businesses role in community/society is). Period.

Now.

I have hesitated to use Purpose because I believe (a) it is used improperly 90% of the time and (b) it is actually better to focus on engagement & contribution and Purpose/results will be an outcome. Purpose is the reason for which something is done or created, the reason for its existence, its use, and its usefulness. Usefulness to others is the mechanism of purpose’s well-documented positive individual and organizational effects. When individuals and organizations think and act with their use to others at the forefront, they’re being purposeful and making their unique contribution (source: Zach Mercurio).

I often translate for all my business leader friends who see “purpose” and panic that it is some nebulous ‘save the world’ bullshit:

“if the people are engaged and focused on contribution they will be more productive, generate more high quality output, be brand ambassadors, be innovative (yes, they will want to contribute ideas to the business itself), be more effective in their behavior (service, customer interactions, vendor relationships, communications) and, you know what? … you’ll be more profitable too.”

source: Zach Mercurio

Or. As Zach shared with me:

It’s actually a basic business principle that’s been dressed up by “thought leaders:” Purpose is contribution, or if you like, “value creation.” Purposeful organizations and their people focus first on contributing and on creating value. They trust that the effects (results) will follow. As Drucker once said, “Profit is not the purpose of a company. It’s the test of its validity.” The more valid your contribution, the more results you’ll see. Every “financial result” is mediated through a human being. Human beings who experience meaningfulness and purpose are far better mediators than those who just “need to get the numbers up!” Frantic leaders (i.e. traditionally-minded business leaders) focus first on producing results, but the problem is you can’t have get an effect without a cause. You can’t have a result without a contribution.

Anyway.

I will say this entire ‘better business for a better world’ topic is fascinating.

While we credit Millennials for the refinding of our business soul (its partially whatever we call Purpose, but its mostly a simple recognition that something is wrong in the way business is being conducted and there has to be a better way) the truth is that this has nothing to do with age or some generational labels. Mary Parker Follet in early 1900’s. Drucker in the 70’s. Toffler in 1985.

They told us this is the way to do business, but when we chose Friedman (with a good dose of Gordon Gecko) business started down the slippery slope of dollars over contribution & responsibility (not Purpose).

The issue now is, as we all know, getting off a slippery slope is hard (you cannot climb back up off it, you need to jump off and restart or get pulled off by a helping hand) so those on it are, well, on it. i find while we suggest it’s a love of the status quo more often than not most business leaders know they are on a slippery slope and can’t get off it.

I am not a Millennial and i have ached for changes like this for, well, forever. Drucker outlined all of this in New Realities 1990, Ewen in Captains of Consciousness 1976, & the Geckos ignored it and the non Geckos (like me) were not strong enough to fight it.

I will say that now we fight.

In the end.

A better way of doing business for a better world.

This is an incredibly difficult topic to navigate. A business first & foremost needs to be successful to survive and its objective is to do things to survive/thrive. And, yet, the path to do so is actually to NOT think about business, but rather think about people, attitudes & maximizing their potential. There is a delicate balance of two truths – a business needs to be in the business of doing business and people are at their highest engagement when they are doing things not because it is business but meaningful. therein lies the paradox. and within that paradox resides the potential.

But. There has to be a better way and we know there is.

Drucker clearly knew this.

Simplistically, while engagement is the key to productivity, contribution is the key to the future of business – a better way of doing business for a better world.

If people contribute, feel like they are contributing and the business, itself, contributes to the greater world the highest level of value (contribution) has been achieved.

I would argue in doing so the business itself will also attain its highest level of effective productivity, solid efficient productivity and consistent profitability. I am not sure what more a business could desire. I am also not sure how that isn’t better business for a better world.

I recently revisited what I wrote that day and, well, wouldn’t change a thing. I am sure there are some lessons in that:

– my North Star remains my North Star

– my beliefs, and principles, remain true

– my understanding of me, well, maybe my understanding of who I am, what I care about and what I want to do (in terms of making an impact) remain unchanged

Your visit here.

I am not a big business or self help book reader. I often find they simply rehash a variety of things, thoughts and ideas that if you have been in the business long enough you pretty much know already. On occasion someone does a great job of articulating a thought and in those cases I take my hat off to them and wish I could have said it as well. With all that said I believe people would be better off reading less of these things and reading & learning more about other things. Anything. To me the most interesting people in the world are the ones who have a variety of interests. That doesn’t mean you should not have a specialty just that maybe your specialty would be even better if you knew more about other things.

I do believe: Ideas result from a new combination of specific knowledge about products with general knowledge about life and events.

I do believe: Interesting people are extensive browsers in all sorts of fields of information.

I do believe: The more of the elements of the world around us which are stored away in the mind, the more the chances are increased for the production of new and striking combinations, or ideas.

I do believe: There are certain things you just cannot write, or think of, until you have lived through certain experiences and filled your reservoir of knowledge to a point when you can drink freely from it.

I do believe: Knowledge is basic to good creative thinking (and interesting personalities).

I do believe: Conflict done well, enlightened conflict as it were, is healthy, challenges the status quo, sparks thinking and fresh ideas.

Interestingly all of those things are also believed by James Webb Young in his 1937 booklet “How to Produce Ideas” (a book on my list of things everyone should read).

So if you want someplace to visit to see a variety of different ideas on some of the most random topics you can think of (although there is business stuff) then I hope you visit here and maybe learn something, maybe chuckle a little, maybe have your curiosity piqued somewhat. There will be some fiction, some fact and always an opinion. I guess my objective is personally reflective (I just want to share some thinking and writing) as well as professionally I have a desire to help broaden someone’s perspective on the world. So, even if one person visits here and starts thinking about something new or in new ways, then I imagine I would have achieved success. Of course, if someone wanted to hire me for a project or something I wouldn’t be opposed to that either.